Naomi Shelton

Posting this amazing live clip of Naomi Shelton to commemorate her passing away a few weeks ago. Apprenty she had the Gospel Queens used to play every Friday night at a regular gig in NYC. If it was anything like this, it must have been incredible. Below is a clip from same gig, recorded after soundcheck. Plus a visit with her at home.

Shelton released her debut album 'What have you done, my brother?' on Daptone Records in 2009, at the age of 66.
 

excerpt from 'Singer Naomi Shelton Made New Yorkers — and Everyone Else — Feel the Love'

“I met Naomi around ’67 or ’68 while playing in Cliff Driver’s band at the Night Cap,” recalls bassist Fred Thomas, who would go on to replace Bootsy Collins in James Brown’s sonic circus as well as sing with Shelton for fifty years. “She was strictly singing R&B and soul then, not gospel. Her voice sounded tough.” She also caught Driver’s ear; he had worked closely with and recorded such singers as Baby Washington. “She had a different type of voice,” he told me before he died, in 2016. “She had that raspy sound, like Mavis Staples.” 

Shelton preferred the male voices of Lou Rawls, Wilson Pickett, and Otis Redding, however — “hard” voices that demanded attention, which she got more of after Gabe Roth stumbled into Flannery’s one night to learn a few licks from his idol Fred Thomas, who happened to be accompanied by Shelton and Driver, and convinced the latter duo to record a few 45s. “Naomi has that raw gospel sound, that phrasing,” Roth told me once. “I don’t know if there’re any singers that can sing like her.”